Waiting for and Preparing for the Coming of God

Isaiah 35:1-10
Canticle: Magnificat
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11

For almost thirty years, at this time of the year, this has been the refrain heard in our house: “I can’t wait until Christmas!” “Christmas is never coming!” Our response? “Christmas is coming. Have patience. Wait for it.” Christmas always comes.

More so than any other time of the year, this is the time of getting everything ready. We get the house ready. We decorate. We clean. We think about presents for folk. We buy the presents for folk. We send them all over the world. We get ready to feast. We prepare for a few days off from the regular routines of life.

The waiting and preparing go hand in hand.

Waiting and preparing. Waiting and preparing.

Our getting ready and waiting in the season of Advent mirror spiritual realities: waiting for and preparing for the coming of God.

The coming of God is the longing and hope of humanity. In Isaiah it is when the wilderness and dry land will be glad. It is opening blind eyes, unstopping deaf ears. Singing, joy and gladness. In Mary’s song, the Magnificat, it will be the lifting up of the lowly, the filling of the hungry with good things. In The gospel the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. The blessing can only be the end of their poverty. That, and more, typifies the longing of humanity. The righting of wrongs. The coming of all that is good. All will be well when God comes.

Yet, the coming of God is elusive. We have no reason to think it will be so other than hope and glimpses. There is no reason to be a “progressive.” The track record of humanity has not been a good one. The great advances of civilization in the last two hundred years have also been matched by terrible devastation and destruction. The glimpses that give us hope are the signs of the coming. The signs are in all those good things that show us a better world. Every healing of disease is a sign. Every poor person who is fed and given decent shelter is a sign. Every child born in hope of a bright future is a sign.

Our greatest glimpse in the person of Jesus. Here is the coming of God in human form. What will the coming be like? It will be like this person Jesus. Yet it is still hope delayed. Two millennia have passed and still we wait for the coming of God.

Our waiting for is also a longing for. It is the deepest yearning of human hearts for a better world.

And in waiting and longing we prepare. Advent gives us a yearly reminder to prepare for the coming of God.

There is a beautiful mediation in our Way of Living, Day 8:

"People love feasts. They love to prepare huge amounts of rich food, and to choose the finest wine; the excitement of preparing a feast is an important part of its pleasure. Then on the appointed day they love to gather in a great crowd, to sing and dance, and then to eat the food and drink the wine. When a child is born people hold feasts; when a young man and woman get married their families hold a feast; when a person dies, his or her children hold a feast . . . And there are feasts to mark all the great religious anniversaries. It is good and natural that people should enjoy feasts, because they are a sign of the greatest feast of all, to which God invites us: the feast in his heavenly kingdom around his throne. There the singing and dancing, the eating and drinking, will last for all eternity. But we do not need to prepare food and choose wine for this heavenly feast; we need to prepare ourselves by learning always to choose righteousness." (Pelagius)

So in Advent 2007, we wait, we yearn; we prepare ourselves for the coming of God. Christ is our hope. All will be well in the coming of God.

+Ab. Andy